Chiang Mai, the second largest city in Thailand, was once the capital of the Lanna Kingdom before that area was joined with the Ayutthaya Kingdom that included Bangkok.
We loved our hotel, Gord Nuea. It preserves a quiet, peaceful spot away from the busy streets of Old-Town Chiang Mai. The family owners are so warm, welcoming, and helpful. The coffee is always great because the owner roasts his own and manages the small Pegasus coffee shop.
On our first night here, we walked around the Old Town to try to get our bearings. Chiang Mai’s Old Town is a single square mile, surrounded by a moat and the occasional remains of a wall. It’s crowded and busy inside the Old Town, with lots of Temples, restaurants, cafes, hotels, and even a few cannabis stores. And we’ve never seen so many massage parlors.
Street vendors of all kinds sell their wares along the streets. Walking the street, and especially in the marketplaces, you can buy chicken or pork on a stick, shish kebobs of all kinds, fried insects, coconut ice cream, pad thai, and almost anything else you can imagine. It’s all very inexpensive and ready to eat. We’re told that many Thais never cook: It’s cheaper to buy street food.
Our evening meal: Across the road from the North Gate, we saw a large open-air restaurant where people cooked their food at each table. A young man helped us learn the system: a buffet where you help yourself to the options, including uncooked pork, chicken and beef. Back at your table is a small domed grill. A slab of fat atop the dome keeps things from sticking while you cook your meat on the dome and heat your noodles in the water around the side. It fed us both, all we could eat, for about twelve dollars. Following dinner, we checked out a recommended spot, the North Gate Jazz Club. Although Sara and I are still early birds, we stayed a while to enjoy some loud music and a drink before heading home.
Time with a friend of a friend: When Gaia Davies, our dear friend in Florida, learned that we would be in Chiang Mai, she contacted her friend Mark to suggest that we meet. Sara and I have enjoyed some wonderful “Friend of a Friend” meetings abroad, and this was no exception. Mark was so gracious and interesting. After picking us up in Chiang Mai, he drove us first through the Chiang Mai University area, which tourists most likely miss. It’s a particularly large area, and the University is well-known and international in its appeal. According to Mark, the costs are also remarkably low.
Then we briefly visited a temple where Mark was anxious for us to see a particularly feminine version of the Buddha. We looked only at the one building: Mark said he had little patience for the proliferation of Buddhas and temples.
We went then to a lovely café in a smaller village outside of town. Here the three of us visited for hours, enjoying coffee and then a lunch of Pad Thai and pizza. Not great food, but serviceable, and the setting was gorgeous. We so enjoyed meeting and chatting with Mark who told us about his own spiritual journey and shared some of his experience living in Thailand for the last ten or more years. Then Mark kindly drove us back to our hotel in Chiang Mai. We really enjoyed spending the day with Mark.
That evening we took a “Chiang Mai Street Food Tour” with Pookie, who took us to three different open markets. She bought samples of anything Sara showed interest in, and we finally sat down to eat at the third marketplace. The food was varied and interesting. Sara indulged her curiosity by eating insects tonight. But it was far more food than we could eat, so we urged Pookie to take the leftovers home to her son. This tour helped us to feel more comfortable buying food along the streets of Chiang Mai. As Les has advised, we always asked for “Mai Ped” — no spice. Nevertheless, some of it was still a bit challenging for wimps like us.
Another full day tour, Chiang Mai Highlights, took us to areas surrounding Chiang Mai, including three more impressive temples: Baan Den temple, Pha Lat temple, and the Doi Suthep temple. Doi Suthep is a major temple built on a mountainside above Chiang Mai. (“Doi” means mountain in Thai.) It’s another lovely temple, and very busy. Normally, it offers a lovely viewpoint looking over Chiang Mai, but not today. (Check the previous post on Chiang Rai to learn why visibility was so limited.) We rode in a longboat on the reservoir to a floating house where we ate lunch. Later we saw the “Sticky Waterfall,” a lovely spot, where people younger and more agile than us could enjoy climbing up a section of the waterfall with the aid of ropes. We enjoyed watching.
We enjoyed the Sunday Walking Market, busy with lots of vendors offering anything you can think of. Sara bought her second pair of elephant pants and Evan bought his elephant shirt. We spent a few hundred baht (probably $4) on street food. As the evening turned to night, hundreds of flies were circling the lights on each vendor’s stop, swarming and attacking as folks walked by. This was too much for us, so we headed back to the hotel, shoeing away those pesky flies until we were clear of the market and vendors.
Doi Intanan National Park: (March 11) This tour took us even farther from Chiang Mai to Doi Intanan, the highest point in all of Thailand. We enjoyed the short Pha Dok Siew walking Nature Trail that took us through a mountaintop forest. Our itinerary also included a visit to a gorgeously landscaped park housing the “King & Queen’s Pagodas” looking out over the mountainside. Unfortunately, hundreds of people were waiting for the few buses that carry visitors to the Pagodas. Conferring with our driver, we decided to skip this part of the tour. (1) It would have been hours of waiting to reach the Pagodas and then more hours for transfer back to the parking area. (2) Given the hazy skies of the “burning season,” there would be no great views or great photos from the park. Instead, our driver took us to quiet but lovely garden, within an agricultural area, known as “The King’s Project.” We took our time strolling the garden, which we had pretty much to ourselves, and then enjoyed some iced coffees.
Later we visited the hill tribe of Mae Klang Luang. We walked through the hillside village, enjoyed a great lunch at the open-air restaurant, and then had the delicious Hill Tribe Coffee. There are many hill tribes in Thailand, and all are long term refugees with no real legal status in the country. Most are from Myanmar, but some are from Laos or China. They build their makeshift homes and manage to eke out a living through agriculture and tourism. Even by Thai standards they are very poor and live a life that we might call primitive. But they welcome visitors to their villages and their roadside markets where they sell their own handicrafts, their fruits and vegetables, and a good number of touristy items that originate in India or China.
On our return to Chiang Mai, we visited a roadside market of a Hmong Tribe, where we found fresh fruit, vegetables and nuts. And for one more picturesque scene, we visited the lovely Wachirathan Waterfall.
About the “Hill Tribes”: There are seven major hill tribes in Thailand, living in small villages and practicing agriculture and crafts – and welcoming visitors. Those who live in the Hill Tribes are the descendants of refugees going back two centuries. Most come from Burma/Myanmar, while others come from China, Laos, and Cambodia. They are not considered Thai citizens, and they enjoy no legal rights in the country. The largest tribe are the Karen people who number about a million.
On another day we visited another hill tribe called the “Long Neck Karen Hill Tribe” not far from Chiang Mai. Women and young girls of this tribe wear numerous brass rings around their necks, seemingly in an effort to lengthen their necks. We walked through two hillside dirt streets where the women and girls sold crafts, carved animals (elephants, Thailand’s national animal, are especially popular), toys, fans, hats, scarves, clothing and so on. There were few men around; presumably they were out working their crops. But the young women were friendly, and quite beautiful. And the children were exceptionally good at sales, demonstrating their wares and offering them in a way that was hard to resist. They gladly posed for pictures with you. We felt somewhat uncomfortable, seeing them with their brass neck rings as cultural artifacts on display, but we forgave ourselves knowing that they certainly welcomed our visit and appreciated the income from their sales.
Sara enjoyed time on her own while Evan dealt with some stomach issues. She loved the Fah Lanna Thai Massage shop where she enjoyed two Thai massages. Thailand massages are easily available and very inexpensive. She also visited a local temple for a “Monk Chat,” an opportunity to visit with a young Buddhist monk about Buddhism and his own experience as a monk in Thailand.
Dinner at the Ginger House (our daughter Lindsey’s favorite so we had to go). Truly an upscale spot by Thai standards although we would think the prices are middle of the road. We shared a really nice selection of appetizers with drinks, all for about $30.
Our time in Chiang Mai included one overnight stay at the Elephant Nature Park March 13. Please visit our separate post covering this unique experience. After visiting the elephants, we returned to Gord Neua in Chiang Mai before heading flying out to the south to visit Phuket and Krabi.
